Nice Beginning To a Fall Camping Trip

Nice Beginning To a Fall Camping Trip, originally uploaded by use2blost.

     I left the battery to the Nikon in the charger. I also did not bring a fishing pole. I ended up buying a rod and reel combo from a Ma and Pa store. Said combo came with what looked like 20lb line. There was no notation on the packaging. Attaching a tiny rooster tail to the ah, rope, I proceeded to catch trout. It was wonderful, one of those times when the fish are biting so well, you begin to think it's YOU. You are a badass. An expert. You can sling a 1/24th oz rooster tail on the end of a freakin' hawser, and catch fish anyway.
     Fishing with this rig is kinda like circumcising with a broadsword. Not just anybody can do it. So I shot this with the little point and shoot, and really like it. The fall colors do it for me, but I'm not gay. The textures of the various lichens and algae on the water-rounded stones, and the scattered autumn leaves tickle my manly fancy. The earth tones, they call out to the  heterosexual outdoorsman within. Too bad I had to shoot it with the low-res fujifilm. I wanted to get it uploaded so I can send the link to some folks I want to make jealous, but that's it. I need to stay off this computer for a couple days.
     Trout fishing is a treat for me. There are no trout where I live, though bream are perhaps a reasonable equivalent, sport-wise. I think it may be the environment. Trout are an oily fish, having oils throughout their body, unlike a whiter fish. Trout are rich in the omega-goodstuff that helps the ticker. These fish generally prefer cooler water, and The local waters around here are like soup much of the year. Usually when I go to North Georgia, it is to hike. As I was leaving this time, Jack my oldest screamed a howling protest. Jack knows what a backpack is for, and my ear and guilty conscience picked up a note of anguished abandonment in Jack's plaintive wail. It occurred to me that I could backpack less, and camp more, until Jack dies. I really don't think it will be long.
     So I changed plans, upgraded a couple items, and threw a second dog in the car, but I forgot my fly rod...and my battery for the Nikon.

I'm going to quit smoking.

Again.

I have a proven method. Quitting, though extremely difficult, is really the easiest part. This I think is misunderstood by those lacking firsthand knowledge, and forgotten swiftly by those who sucessfully banish nicotine from their lifestyle for an extended period. I know a hiking trail in the Appalachians that makes an eleven mile circle over remote, rugged terrain (actually if you have a mapping GPS, and you're an overweight, out-of-shape smoker, you will show a covered distance of nearly seventeen miles. Evidently staggering from one side of the trail to another in exhaustion significantly adds to the trip.) If I don't want to have a heart attack, I take three days to walk this loop. It's friggin' torture. Also, for some reason, it is my idea of a good time.

Three days without cigarettes, gives me a significant investment, and then making four, is easier. And then making five is easier. And so on. It is the staying stopped that proves my undoing. My life is littered with smoking people that I love and with whom I interact. About nine or ten days into a stab at quitting, I'll smoke a cigarette. Go figure.

Now, if I haven't had a cigarette in 10 hours, and I smoke a Marlboro, I catch a pleasant euphoria. It is mild, and brief, but Ive been doing this since I was 12. My body recognizes this old friend, and the pleasant associations imprinted in my recall. After a day or two this euphoria is no longer mild. As my system withdraws from nicotine and my tolerance is diminished, this euphoric effect increases in intensity, becoming so over powering it borders on unpleasant... Definitely an acquired taste.

Did you know tobacco was sacred, to Lakota (and possibly other tribes...I wouldn't know.) Indians? It is that potent. An old Indian I know will use tobacco in ritual religious observances. It is a powerful herb. After even a brief abstinence, it is a sledghammer blow of altered consciousness. And I love that. I always have. In any form (It made for an interesting youth).

So cigarettes become vice, with buzz as it's object. (An insidious drug, nicotine. Addiction is not so much about getting high...a chronic smoker like myself smokes to stave off that feeling of need, of badness, of wordless discontent that lurks behind everything in my life. It's always there. Soon, it will make me go outside. In certain company, I will be ashamed. ), It seems I have almost gotten two addictions for the price of one.

I begin to have a cigarette every couple of days. They're AWESOME. Somewhere in between booty and ice cream. If you have one with some good coffee, it moves leftward on the BIC scale. I think about the cigarette I'm gonna have that evening, or whatever. With my 30 year history of smoking, plus the additional conditioning I give myself, with these little nicotine trysts, I am painting myself into a behavioral corner. My psych text calls this a powerful reinforcer, as opposed to the normal kind, which is most every other time it is used in the book.

Of course, a bad day is coming. isn't it? A shit hit the fan day. Life is good, but these days are sprinkled among them. The wisdom of the years is slow coming to the likes of me, but some things do sink in over time. I know these days are inevitable, and five or six cigarettes into one of those Days, and I'm well and goodly hooked all over again.

I am afraid that these things will kill me. I am going to try again, during the fall break. I have tried patches, pills, lozenges, dip, gum. Everything. Nothing has ever given me that three day head start I can get by going for a walk in the woods. And since I'll be alone, I won't have to kill somebody. Cause they breathed.

Here goes...

I have made it through

The first week of school, A little behind on my reading, but I feel, prepared for my first test monday. I have have some feelings of trepidation, over finance, and time management, the pressure of juggling a couple of days a week of work, my studies, the obligations of my guardianship over my invalid aunt, and relationships: romance with Debbie, building bridges with my family, and establishing/maintaining intimacy with members of my small group, and church community. I  believe relationships are the most important thing, and that we most closely resemble the image of the Living God when we interact in loving community, and that our power to do good is multiplied exponentially when we cooperate, The whole being greater than the sum of its parts. The question is, how to do the next right thing? Is it a question of seasons, and should some things simply be sacrificed, or curtailed for the next four years? These are hard decisions. And what of my love of photography, and my need to escape to the mountains, to recharge, and reach the quiet, lonely places to better hear the voice of my Father in Heaven?